


Shake It Out

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [14]
Category: History (Band)
Genre: Chatting & Messaging, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Military, Near Future, Pining, Reunions, Secrets, idolverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-03 12:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11531838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: When Kyungil returns from the military, there's so much to say that neither of them know where to begin.Soundtrack: "Shake it Out", Florence + The Machine





	Shake It Out

**_Date: September 10, 2018 - 8:06am_ **

**_From: songleader87_ **

**_To: maknaejeong910_ **

 

_ Yijeongie~ _

_ Happy birthday :) How is the weather in Seoul? It’s strange to think I’ll be back in a week. Do you know who’s coming to pick me up? _

_ -Hyung _

 

 

**_Date: September 10, 2018 - 10:42am_ **

**_From: maknaejeong910_ **

**_To: songleader87_ **

 

_ Really. REALLY?? You just sent me a four-page email last night FINALLY confessing, and I wrote you back an equally long and detailed response accepting your feelings (your totally OBVIOUS FOR LIKE A MILLION YEARS FEELINGS), and now you want to talk about the weather?? _

 

 

**_Date: September 10, 2018 - 6:17pm_ **

**_From: songleader87_ **

**_To: maknaejeong910_ **

 

_ I panicked. _

 

 

**_Date: September 10, 2018 - 6:23pm_ **

**_From: maknaejeong910_ **

**_To: songleader87_ **

 

_ It’s sunny today. _

 

 

**_Date: September 10, 2018 - 11:58pm_ **

**_From: maknaejeong910_ **

**_To: songleader87_ **

 

_ And, like I’d let anyone else pick you up. _

 

*

Kyungil stares out the backseat window of the fifth car he’s been in today. He left this morning, packed up the last year and a half of his life and moved out and started the journey back to reality. Parts of his service felt like a dream he couldn’t wake up from, and sometimes, a dream he didn’t  _ want  _ to wake up from.

He watches the dark roads turn to light slowly, the passing signs leading closer and closer to Seoul. Yijeong will be waiting for him when they get to the drop-off spot. Kyungil hopes they picked a place far away enough, private enough, for no one else to know it’s even happening. He’s not sure he trusts himself to not do something embarrassing. Like cry.

Or kiss Yijeong. Finally.

Yijeong’s right. Before the year and a half, it had been more years of this, more years of dancing around the truth they were both aware of. It could have been even more years, really, except being alone, removed from everything familiar and comforting, Kyungil had way too much time to think, and what he thought about was…

Yijeong.

Kyungil can’t even blame it on alcohol. He hasn’t had a drop to drink in the last twenty-one months. Exhaustion might be a better excuse, but he knows Yijeong would never buy it. He doesn’t want to take it back, anyhow. He meant what he said, alone at his computer at two in the morning, too close and too far away at the same time to coming home.

 

_ It’s always been you, Yijeongie, and I should have said something sooner.  _

 

If he’s being honest, Kyungil was never worried about how Yijeong would react to the confession. Neither of them had really gone too far out of their way to hide their feelings, even if they had to express them in different, more subtle ways, before.

Actually, Kyungil’s not really sure how subtle any of it was. They never acted on it, but it was always pretty clear to him.

He's not worried about Yijeong turning him down, rejecting him.

What worries Kyungil is time.

It’s been a year and a half since he and Yijeong even saw each other, let alone spoke in any way that wasn’t electronic or text-based. It’s not that they couldn’t have had phone calls, or even maybe seen each other occasionally.

Yijeong hadn’t wanted to.

The last time they talked face to face, the morning Kyungil enlisted, Yijeong had insisted with tears in his eyes that he couldn’t have handled that.

_ “It’s too hard, even without hearing your voice. It’s too much, hyung. I’d rather just miss you so much it hurts until you come back.” _

Always so dramatic, Yijeong.

But, Kyungil thinks now, as the car makes the last few turns before arriving at the little diner he and Yijeong used to frequent when they were trainees together, maybe he was right. Absence has definitely made the heart grow fonder, and Kyungil honestly didn’t think he could get any more fond than he already was. He’s fully prepared to be proven wrong, in the next ten minutes or so.

When the sedan pulls into the empty parking lot of the diner, Kyungil presses his face against the glass of the window, trying to see anything. Trying to see Yijeong.

It’s not sunny. Maybe it was yesterday, when Yijeong sent the email, but now it’s storming and raindrops are chasing each other down the outside of Kyungil’s window and obscuring his view, and he sighs, leaning back in his seat and waiting. Waiting for whatever is about to happen to him.

The driver parks silently, hopping out to go around the back and get Kyungil’s luggage from the trunk. Kyungil wants to help. He just doesn’t know if he’s supposed to. He feels scared, suddenly, maybe more scared than he was when he left all those months ago. It’s so unfamiliar now, and all he wants is to see one familiar face. One  _ specific  _ familiar face.

The sound of the car door opening is sudden and knocks Kyungil from his thoughts. He glances up, and the driver looks back down at him, shielding them both with a black umbrella as he nods toward another car, idling nearby. “There’s your ride home.”

Kyungil frowns, biting his lip. It’s the sixth car he’s been in today, and unless Yijeong is in it, waiting for him, he doesn’t want to go. He wants to get out, run around, stretch his legs. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining. But, Yijeong might be in the car, so Kyungil nods back and lets the driver lead him across the parking lot with the umbrella. He lets his bags be put in a different trunk, and then the back door of the sixth car Kyungil’s been in and/or around today opens and he sees Yijeong for the first time.

Kyungil doesn’t know what he expects, but quiet Yijeong is pretty low on the list. He looks at Kyungil with wide eyes, a beanie shoved over his hair, and says softly, “Come on, let’s go.”

And Kyungil goes.

He slides into the backseat, thanking the driver of the fifth car he’d been in today for his trouble, and then the door to the sixth car closes and they’re alone.

Mostly. The privacy shield is up between them and the driver, Kyungil notices.

He stares at Yijeong, and Yijeong stares straight ahead.

He looks different, sort of, Kyungil thinks. Twenty-one months isn’t forever, but it’s long enough for a few things to change. Yijeong looks more tired, now. There’s bags under his eyes. Kyungil wonders why he hasn’t been sleeping well. He hopes it’s not because of him.

They ride in silence for a while, and finally Kyungil asks, “How are you?”, because he can’t think of anything else.

It makes Yijeong smile a little. “I think I’m happy, but I’m too close to throwing up to tell,” he says, and Kyungil chuckles and then they’re quiet some more.

Kyungil guesses they’re going to his apartment. It would make the most sense. He wonders if Yijeong still lives in the same place, in the building next door. He wonders if Yijeong is going home after he drops Kyungil off, or if he’s going to stay. Kyungil really fucking hopes it’s the latter.

They’re almost to Kyungil’s building, and Kyungil is almost asleep, lulled by the feeling of the road underneath him, when he feels Yijeong’s hand slip into his. Yijeong’s hands are smaller than Kyungil’s. They’ve always fit perfectly. Kyungil adds that to the list he’s keeping in his head of things that haven’t changed. It’s comforting.

He chances a quick glance to his right. Yijeong is still staring ahead, staring through the privacy screen at nothing, but even in the dark of the evening storm, Kyungil can see he’s blushing.

*

Yijeong hands Kyungil his housekeys as the elevator carries them up. They feel good in his hand, the weight of something like  _ home,  _ finally, after all this time. He bounces them a little in his palm as the elevator climbs, and he keeps bouncing them as they trudge down the hall, Kyungil carrying three bags and a suitcase and Yijeong shouldering Kyungil’s smallest bag.

Kyungil gets the key turned in the lock without much effort, considering how much his hands are starting to shake from sheer nerves, and then they’re in his dark apartment.

It’s  _ really  _ dark, actually. The kind of dark that seems even more so when it’s directly followed by so much light.

Kyungil drops all the bags he’s been holding, moving around the front room delicately, trying to remember where all the lamps and light switches are, but then he hears Yijeong drop his small bag too and he’s turning around to look for him and then suddenly he’s not doing anything anymore except kissing Yijeong.

It’s a little embarrassing, the noise that Kyungil makes when Yijeong starts backing them up towards the nearest wall. It’s kind of like a half-moan-quarter-growl-quarter-whimper thing, and it’s highly undignified, but Kyungil’s never cared about being dignified around Yijeong and he certainly doesn’t now, because it’s  _ finally  _ happening. This big thing he’s imagined for years is happening, and it’s better than anything his brain could have come up with.

By the time Kyungil’s back hits the wall, his hands are pushing Yijeong’s beanie off and running through his hair, tugging fistfuls of it and Yijeong still uses the same shampoo and he smells like oranges and honey and Kyungil could honestly just die happy right now, except he really hopes he doesn’t, because he knows, with all the certainty in the world, that everything after this is going to be even better.

When they have to part for air, breathless and laughing and touching each other everywhere, Kyungil whispers, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” and Yijeong is nipping at his collarbone when he answers, “I knew anyway,” and Kyungil has never been more glad to have been so transparent.

He tells Yijeong everything else, all the things he couldn’t fit into a four-page confession email, throughout the rest of the night. He presses the words into Yijeong’s skin with his lips and hopes they sink in, hopes they keep this fire between them burning, and Yijeong does the same, murmuring in his sing-song voice back to Kyungil all the things he’s wanted to hear for so long, and when they finally fall asleep, Yijeong wrapped up tight in Kyungil’s arms, neither of them can stop smiling, even through the exhaustion of everything.

They stay in bed for most of the next day, learning each other all over again, figuring out all the secrets they never got to tell before. Neither of them actually say  _ I love you,  _ not out loud. It’s there, anyway. It’s in the air around them, in the way their lips brush and their hands skid over every curve and bump in the long, long road that led them here. It’s everywhere.


End file.
